Germans take Kharkov

At the beginning of April 1918 the Central Powers occupied Kharkov, the largest city of eastern Ukraine and the main centre of Soviet power on the left bank of the Dnieper. The British chronology of the war and some studies give the date as 8 April, others, especially Russian ones, as 7 April. According to Russian accounts, German units entered the city from the direction of the Poltava highway, and the leaders of the local Bolsheviks left the city soviet building only when the Germans had taken the railway station. According to Ukrainian studies, the Bolsheviks finally left Kharkov on 8 April, and German troops entered it then, while Ukrainian soldiers reached the city a day later.

Capital of Red Ukraine

Since December 1917 Kharkov had been the Bolsheviks’ stronghold in Ukraine. It was here, after their defeat in Kiev, that the delegates of the soviets gathered and proclaimed a Ukrainian Soviet republic as a counterweight to the Central Rada. In February 1918 the city became the capital of the Donetsk–Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic, led by the Old Bolshevik Fyodor Sergeyev, known as Artyom. The republic comprised the Kharkov and Yekaterinoslav governorates and the coalfield on the Donets, and considered itself part of Soviet Russia, not of Ukraine. Its leaders hoped that as a result the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, in which Russia undertook to recognise Ukraine and withdraw its troops from it, would not cover their lands. The Germans had no intention of accepting this.

The march from Poltava

After taking Poltava on 29 March, the Germans and the units of the Ukrainian People’s Republic advanced along the railway towards Kharkov. The main Ukrainian force was General Oleksandr Natiiv (PL)’s Zaporozhian Division, whose regiments were led in battle by Colonel Petro Bolbochan. According to the Ukrainian historian Viktor Savchenko, the Germans broke through the Red defences at Lyubotyn station west of the city and routed some of the units that tried to hold it. The Red Guards and the workers from the Donbas could not match regular troops, and the Soviet command had no control over its own formations.

The government of the Donetsk–Krivoy Rog Republic left Kharkov for Luhansk. At the end of April, when the Germans approached that city too, it fled further, into Russia. From the units retreating from the Donbas, Kliment Voroshilov formed an army that fought its way to the Volga, to Tsaritsyn.

Under a German garrison

After entering the city, the German and Ukrainian troops held a joint parade attended by Natiiv. Bolbochan, with his commander’s consent, appointed Colonel Oleksandr Shapoval (PL) temporary commandant of the governorate. On 9 April the Ukrainian war ministry expanded the Zaporozhian Division into a corps, which was soon sent to the Crimea and the Donbas.

Real power in Kharkov, however, belonged to the Germans. The city lay in their occupation zone, and a German garrison remained there until the autumn. From Kharkov German units advanced further east and north, crossing the borders of the lands that the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk assigned to Ukraine. They stopped only at the beginning of May, when an armistice with the Soviet forces was concluded at Korenevo station in Kursk governorate. The capture of Kharkov meant the collapse of Bolshevik power over most of Left-bank Ukraine.